There are days when there are so many things going on that I simply don’t have the hours in the day to respond to everything popping up in the media. Recently embittered neighbors (you can read Leroy Laney’s poetry here) “won” a lawsuit against a project on Harvard (and it was the City that “lost” since the neighbors sued them for their interpretation of their own code). All they’ve done is delay the project (the image above this post is from the comments section at Capitol Hill Seattle Blog).

I will probably do a more comprehensive post on that decision later, but for now here’s my e-mail to Joe Copland at Crosscut. Joe is a great journalist and I worked with him for a long time at Crosscut. This isn’t a slam on Joe, but just the fact that we are still fighting an uphill battle to shift the narrative away from the default one which is all about developers breaking the law for fun and profit. So my note to Joe will have to serve as our response for now. I also comment on another item in the Daily Troll about family housing.  

Hi Joe,

First, when I get a minute I will likely post a clarification of what’s going on with the micro decision.

This is an elected judge siding with the neighbors. Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s what you’d expect I’d say. But a closer look will show that the City’s code allows this interpretation. It’s nothing sneaky. Our system allows people to challenge the underlying assumptions of a law. The judge is essentially saying, “yes it’s code compliant, but the underlying code is bad.”

This is really, really important. The rhetoric is that somehow projects are “violating the law.” No, they are following a law you don’t like. There’s a big difference.

With regard to family housing, that’s the point we’ve been making again and again the adverse decisions made by Council lately that put a squeeze on single-family housing. Making it harder to build single-family housing isn’t going to make family housing easier. In fact, as I pointed out in a recent post, the rules we’ve erected around the single-family zone wall out families looking for affordable housing.

Trying to change the narrative about the greedy developers trying to skirt the law for profit and to squash the little guy isn’t your job; its mine. But when this stuff comes up give me a call for background and I’m glad to at least give the other side.

Roger–